77 STORIES · TAGGED
BRUNO MARS · 2016
LAS VEGAS, USA
"24K Magic" sounds like a brag about wealth, but it is really an invitation: Bruno Mars rebuilt the Las Vegas showroom of his childhood as a…
KENDRICK LAMAR · 2015
COMPTON, USA
A gospel-grade promise wrapped in West Coast jazz: a young rapper from Compton tells a generation in the middle of an uprising that, somehow…
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2014
"Bad Blood" is not a breakup song at all. It is about a female friendship that curdled into professional sabotage, and it became famous most…
BILLIE EILISH · 2019
HIGHLAND PARK, LOS ANGELES, USA
"Bad Guy" is not a villain's anthem at all. It is a teenager laughing at a boy who performs toughness, then calmly revealing that the real m…
ENRIQUE IGLESIAS · 2014
MADRID, SPAIN
A summer anthem that bridged Madrid, Miami, and Havana, "Bailando" became one of the most-streamed Spanish-language songs of the decade. Its…
IMAGINE DRAGONS · 2017
"Believer" sounds like a stadium workout anthem, but it is really a thank-you letter to suffering. Dan Reynolds wrote it after years of chro…
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2014
A masterclass in self-aware celebrity, "Blank Space" weaponized tabloid mythology by becoming the very monster the press had been drawing fo…
THE WEEKND · 2019
LAS VEGAS, USA
Behind the bright, joyful synth riff is a song about a man alone, drunk and speeding through a city at night because he can't stand being wi…
LADY GAGA · 2011
The biggest self-acceptance anthem of the 2010s did not begin with Lady Gaga at all — it borrows its title and its soul from a 1970s disco r…
BTS · 2019
On the surface it is a candy-coloured crush song, but "Boy With Luv" is really BTS admitting that the swaggering, chest-out version of thems…
PINK · 2011
A power ballad written for the animated film Happy Feet Two, "Bridge of Light" arrived in late 2011 as a quieter cousin to Pink's blockbuste…
THE WEEKND · 2015
Behind the bounciest, most Michael Jackson-flavoured pop hit of 2015 is a love song addressed to a drug, and that drug is widely understood …
SIA · 2014
"Chandelier" sounds like the ultimate party anthem, but it's actually a harrowing confession about alcoholism and addiction — Sia's own. The…
ONEREPUBLIC · 2013
Behind the stomping banjo-pop and the singalong chorus, "Counting Stars" is a song about money anxiety: a hit songwriter lying awake over bi…
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2019
It sounds like the most euphoric summer song Taylor Swift ever made, but it is really about the terror of loving someone in secret and the h…
BLACKPINK · 2018
The title isn't nonsense. It is the sound of gunfire, and the song is a two-and-a-half-minute warning shot fired at the idea that a pretty g…
IMAGINE DRAGONS · 2012
"Demons" sounds like a dark love song, but at its heart it is a confession from a man who believes his inner darkness could hurt the people …
LUIS FONSI FT. DADDY YANKEE · 2017
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
En enero de 2017, una canción grabada en un estudio modesto de San Juan rompió todos los récords de la industria musical global. "Despacito"…
LUIS FONSI FT. DADDY YANKEE · 2017
LA PERLA, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
The biggest party song of the 2010s is, at heart, a plea for patience: a seduction that refuses to rush, written by a balladeer who woke up …
LUIS FONSI FT. DADDY YANKEE · 2017
LA PERLA, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
The biggest song on the planet in 2017 is not a party anthem at all — it is a patient, almost courtly argument for slowing down, written by …
ARCTIC MONKEYS · 2013
It sounds like the most confident seduction in modern rock, but the question in the title is not aimed at the woman at all. Alex Turner is i…
PSY · 2012
GANGNAM DISTRICT, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
The world danced to "Gangnam Style" as a goofy novelty hit, but at its core it is a sharp satire of status-obsessed wealth in Seoul's riches…
DAFT PUNK · 2013
The biggest flirtation anthem of the 2010s is not really about a hookup at all — it is about surviving the night, written by two men whose e…
DRAKE · 2018
"God's Plan" sounds like a victory lap, but at heart it is a quiet, almost anxious prayer from a man who feels surrounded by people hoping h…
DRAKE · 2018
TORONTO, CANADA
A Toronto rapper turns a million-dollar music video budget into a gift to strangers in Miami, and somehow the song attached to it becomes th…
BRUNO MARS · 2010
A devastatingly catchy ballad about asymmetric love, "Grenade" arrived in late 2010 as Bruno Mars's calling card — a song that hides operati…
ADELE · 2015
A piano ballad disguised as a phone call, "Hello" arrived in October 2015 and shattered streaming records before its parent album, 25, even …
AVICII · 2013
The voice on the biggest folk-house record of the decade belongs to a Grammy-winning Appalachian bluegrass singer who was the uncredited sin…
THE LUMINEERS · 2012
"Ho Hey" sounds like a wedding singalong, but it was born from years of loneliness, failed gigs and a hunger to belong. The famous shouts st…
DRAKE · 2015
TORONTO, CANADA
A Toronto rapper turns a regretful late-night phone call into one of the decade's most parodied dance moves, and somehow also into a treatis…
KENDRICK LAMAR · 2017
COMPTON, USA
A two-and-a-half-minute earthquake from Compton: a piano stab, a sneer at industry vanity, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning album's opening salv…
COLDPLAY · 2015
WORLI VILLAGE, MUMBAI, INDIA
Chris Martin set out to write Coldplay's first proper late-night club banger, and the hook he came up with was reportedly about buying a rou…
BRUNO MARS · 2010
A debut single engineered with the precision of a Brill Building factory and the warmth of a Stevie Wonder ballad, "Just the Way You Are" an…
AVICII · 2011
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
The defining anthem of the EDM decade contains not a single word written by its maker. Its emotional core is a borrowed scrap of Etta James …
BRUNO MARS · 2012
"Locked Out of Heaven" sounds like a hymn but is really a sweaty love song: a man so overwhelmed by physical intimacy that he describes it a…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 2014
It sounds like a breezy new disco single from 2014, but "Love Never Felt So Good" is actually a voice, a piano and a pair of snapping finger…
EMINEM FT. RIHANNA · 2010
The defining hook of 2010 was reportedly written by a broke, burned-out songwriter alone in the Oregon woods, and she had her record label i…
BILLIE EILISH & KHALID · 2018
Despite its sweet title, "Lovely" is a song about being trapped inside your own head, written by a sixteen-year-old who was quietly struggli…
EMINEM · 2010
DETROIT, USA
The biggest comeback single of Eminem's career is really a sobriety letter set to a stadium beat — a man roughly two years clean apologising…
BILLIE EILISH · 2016
"Ocean Eyes" was never meant to launch a career. It was a song her older brother had written for his own band, recorded by a 13-year-old so …
LIL NAS X · 2019
ATLANTA, USA
A 19-year-old kid from Atlanta bought a $30 beat online, recorded a song about horses in a closet, and rewrote the rulebook of American popu…
DRAKE · 2016
The most inescapable song of 2016 was built on the bones of a London club record from 2008 that the British music industry had already moved…
COLDPLAY · 2011
"Paradise" is not a song about bliss. It is a quiet story about a disappointed child who survives by daydreaming, wrapped in the largest str…
ED SHEERAN · 2017
"Perfect" sounds like a man telling a woman she is flawless, but it is really a song about being chosen while still unfinished — written for…
ED SHEERAN · 2014
"Photograph" is not really a love song — it is a song about distance, and about choosing to keep an ache because the ache is the last piece …
FOSTER THE PEOPLE · 2010
LOS ANGELES, USA
The whistled, sun-bleached song of the summer is sung from inside the head of a boy who has found his father's gun, and the cheerful chorus …
ARCTIC MONKEYS · 2012
It sounds like the most swaggering, self-assured riff Arctic Monkeys ever wrote, but "R U Mine?" is actually a man losing his nerve: a quest…
IMAGINE DRAGONS · 2012
It sounds like a song about the end of the world, but "Radioactive" is really about one person's private awakening: a young man who had spen…
VANCE JOY · 2013
"Riptide" sounds like a sunny ukulele love song, but underneath the strumming it is a nervous, tangled portrait of anxiety: falling for some…
ADELE · 2010
It is not really a breakup song. It is a reply to an insult — Adele has said the track came out of being told her life without him would be …
LORDE · 2013
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
"Royals" is not a protest song against the rich so much as a teenager's shrug at a fantasy she was never invited into. A 15-year-old in subu…
NATHANIEL RATELIFF & THE NIGHT SWEATS · 2015
COTTAGE GROVE, OREGON, USA
The biggest drinking singalong of the 2010s is not a drinking song at all — "S.O.B." is a first-person account of alcohol withdrawal, writte…
ADELE · 2011
A symphonic torch song that turned the private theater of heartbreak into a stadium-sized catharsis, "Set Fire to the Rain" arrived in 2011 …
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2014
A horn-driven pop confection that doubled as Taylor Swift's public divorce papers from Nashville, "Shake It Off" is less a song about haters…
LADY GAGA & BRADLEY COOPER · 2018
A film song that became a generational anthem, "Shallow" turned a fictional duet between a fading country-rock star and an unknown bar singe…
ED SHEERAN · 2017
"Shape of You" is the song that broke streaming. Released in January 2017 as a surprise double A-side with "Castle on the Hill," it became t…
TRAVIS SCOTT · 2018
HOUSTON, USA
"Sicko Mode" is not one song but three, bolted together from orphaned beats by producers who never shared a room, and the voice anchoring it…
ADELE · 2012
A torch song dressed as a spy theme, "Skyfall" reframed the James Bond opening sequence as a meditation on collapse, loyalty, and the strang…
FUN. · 2012
Behind the stomping drums and stadium chant, "Some Nights" is a sleepless confession from a man in his thirties who has finally got the succ…
GOTYE · 2011
MORNINGTON PENINSULA, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
The biggest song of 2012 is not a breakup anthem — it is a trap. The first half invites you to side with a wounded man, then Kimbra's verse …
ADELE · 2011
A piano, a voice, and a wound that refuses to scab over. "Someone Like You" arrived in 2011 as the closing track of Adele's 21, and within m…
THE WEEKND FT. DAFT PUNK · 2016
"Starboy" sounds like a victory lap, but underneath the supercars and swagger it is a funeral. The Weeknd uses the song to kill off his old …
SAM SMITH · 2014
"Stay With Me" sounds like a cathedral-sized love song, but it is really about a one-night stand and the humiliating, very human wish that a…
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2014
"Style" sounds like a sleek, late-night driving song about fashion and cool, but it is really about a relationship that can never quite end.…
LORDE · 2013
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
"Team" sounds like a stadium-sized friendship anthem, but it is really a teenager's quiet manifesto: a love letter to the bored, unglamorous…
BRUNO MARS · 2016
On the surface it is a shopping list of luxuries, but "That's What I Like" is really a love song about generosity: a man who measures his af…
ED SHEERAN · 2011
LONDON, UK
It sounds like a gentle, fingerpicked love song, but "The A Team" is actually about a young homeless woman trapped in crack cocaine addictio…
ED SHEERAN · 2014
A waltz-time love song dressed in soul-revivalist clothing, "Thinking Out Loud" became the third single from Ed Sheeran's 2014 album x and g…
DAVID GUETTA FT. SIA · 2011
The most defiant vocal of the EDM era was a scratch demo sung by a woman who had just quit being a pop star, written for somebody else entir…
MARK RONSON FT. BRUNO MARS · 2014
A swaggering, synth-slathered love letter to Minneapolis funk that became the unlikeliest global juggernaut of the streaming era. Beneath it…
MARK RONSON FT. BRUNO MARS · 2014
"Uptown Funk" sounds like a carefree party song, but it is really a painstaking act of musical archaeology: a love letter to the Minneapolis…
MARC ANTHONY · 2013
The biggest salsa anthem of the 2010s began life as an Algerian raï song, and Marc Anthony released it straight after a very public divorce.…
SHAKIRA · 2010
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
The most-played football anthem of all time is not really Shakira's song at all — its unforgettable chant was lifted from a 1980s Cameroonia…
AVICII · 2013
The biggest dance record of the decade was booed when it premiered — a Swedish DJ played a country-folk song to a field of ravers in Miami a…
HARRY STYLES · 2019
"Watermelon Sugar" takes its title from a strange 1968 hippie novel that happened to be lying on a studio table, and it hides a cheeky, grow…
FUN. · 2011
The biggest youth anthem of the 2010s is actually about a bad night: a guilty, half-drunk narrator at a bar trying to patch things up with s…
GIRL IN RED · 2018
It gets filed as a cosy autumn playlist song, but "We Fell in Love in October" is really a small, stubborn act of naming: a teenage girl in …